작품 상세

₦ 2,200,000-2,800,000 $5,790-7,370 A graduate of the famous Yaba School, Abiodun Olaku was taught by some of the finest great masters of contemporary Nigerian art: Yusuf Grillo, Isiaka Osunde and Kolade Oshinowo. These masters deposited in Olaku such artistic heritage that represents one of Nigeria’s finest story of going through the richest art pedagogy. The result is an artist who has given us so much to see, appreciate and draw knowledge and inspiration from our famished human landscape. Olaku’s works focus on his obsession with the landscape, which seems to provide him a template on which as a writer he tells stories and interrogates issues, events, seasons and conditions. Olaku is fascinated by Nigeria’s ordinary everyday stories in the city. He is concerned about the living condition of ordinary slum dwellers. But some of his earlier works also show how observant he is of the old western Nigeria’s village landscape of red roofs and red mud structures, often set on undulating topography. His representational realism teases photography. His is a unique realism that is expressive, romantic and sometimes mystical in the way that he uses light, shades, and shadows as visual interplay on his landscapes. His subjects are dawns, night scenes, sunsets and water-side sceneries. Swamp slum architecture sited on the waters reflects silent stories of the people that sometimes are only seen by the simmering lights that come faintly through their small windows. Each of Olaku’s landscapes are a poetic expression of the dialogue between time, season, light, darkness, reflection, shadows, shades, people on the streets, empty streets, tranquility and serenity. Chaos is not a normal scene in most of Olaku’s landscapes. That, in a sense, mirrors the personality of the artist. (JB). ABIODUN OLAKU (b.1958), EVENING SHUTTLE, 2010, Oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm. (20 x 24 in.) Signed and dated (lower right).